Thursday, December 16, 2004

Of Pagan love

Yesterday I watched Closer, and while I'm glad I did, it is one of the unpleasantest films I've seen in some time. The story follows the hideously intertwined sexual relationships of four selfish, faithless, cruel, guilt-ridden, despairing, hopeless, and entirely ordinary people as they brutally destroy their own and others' lives--all in the name of love. The movie is really brillant at portraying this as the abomination it is, without giving into the typical Hollywood temptation of trying to pander to audiences' desire for mere titillation. There is a great deal of (quite explicit) on-screen sexual content (although, interestingly, not a single sex scene), but it is all far from appealing. 'Eviscerating' is a better term.

The love possessed by the characters in this film (which is smart enough not to put forward the all-too-tidy 'sex vs. love' dichotomy) is monstrous, an idiot and bestial mutation of the familiar Christian virtue. Closer is a phenomenally accurate portrayal of how human depravity perverts even such a noble thing as love into a weapon for annihilating souls, but it does so without offering any sort of a solution, because the moviemakers obviously do not have one. It gives us the Law (no pun intended) without the Gospel, and the result is really depressing. To sum up my reaction to the film, I must reference one of its scenes. Jude Law's character has just met Natalie Portman's character and is describing to her his work as an obituary writer. He explains the euphemisms used in the obits page ('convivial'=alchoholic, 'private'=gay, etc.), and she asks him what her euphemism would be. He replies, "Disarming." When she objects that 'disarming' is not a euphemism, he says, "In your case it is."

In this film's case, 'disarming' is a euphemism.

posted by Jeremy at 9:38 PM

2 Marginalia:

Jeremy,
I think you should name this blog something less innoncuous. How about "Tank's Mystic Sex Party: All will be revealed"? You've sort of got an anagogy of the flesh thing going. I really like what you post. I sometimes wish it was more consistent. Someday you should also come visit mywifesonandI.

Josh Stevenson

By  Anonymous, at 5:52 AM  

Yeah, I also had noticed my blog's preoccupation with sex, and found it rather amusing myself. Many of the posts were actually spurred by other trains of thought, but I guess only the sexy bits seemed postworthy. Chalk it up to my being a desparate virgin (damn, that sounds dirty).

By  Jeremy, at 6:42 PM  

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